Pall Chairman Throwing Up a Smokescreen Over Pollution

Pall chairman throwing up a smokescreen over pollution

OCT 27 1997 

By PATRICIA BENSON

I appreciated Chong Pyen's Oct. 12 article in The News reviewing the status of the 1,4-dioxane contamination cleanup in our community. The headline on the article, however, was misleading. Rather than Pall battling litigation, it is the corporation itself which has dragged our city, township and county into court, forcing our tax dollars to be used for the cleanup “battle.”

The article included quotations from telephone conversations with Eric Krasnoff, Pall chairman. Multiple fallacies in Krasnoff's statements demand a response. Citizens, whose very real concerns about PGSI mismanagement of the cleanup are well founded, are again being blamed for delays in moving forward with remediation of this huge environmental mess. Krasnoff likens citizen involvement in the cleanup to “a cottage industry, like bird-watching.” I suggest that Krasnoff does his homework before he again chooses to insult an entire community.

Robert Tickle, Scio Township supervisor, wrote to Krasnoff before Pall’s acquisition of Gelman Sciences, to welcome him to the community and” invite him to learn the township board's position on the cleanup. Krasnoff has never responded. Nor has Krasnoff ever met personally with local officials whose jurisdictions he is now suing. Yet he complains that “there’s nothing we can do about something we want to disagree on.”

It is true that the treatment standards being imposed “are more stringent than the standards for your drinking water” as the current state drinking water standard for 1,4-dioxane is 77 parts per billion. However, Krasnoff's implication that his company has been singled out for unusually strict regulation is unsupportable.

At the “core” contamination site, where treated purgewater is intermittently being discharged to a tributary of Honey Creek, the permit limit for. discharge is 10 PPB or less. This was lowered by the state from PGSI’s request for 60 PPB due to unequivocal proof that portions of Honey Creek lose water to groundwater aquifers. Groundwater rules in the state currently forbid degradation of pristine aquifers (as exist along Honey Creek). If even 1 PPB enters these pristine resources, it is degradation.

Federal and state regulations require any discharger of compounds like 1,4-dioxane to apply effective and affordable technical methods to reduce or destroy it. Properly managed treatment systems elsewhere in the country consistently reduce 1,4-dioxane to 10 PPB or less.

The drinking-water standard for 1,4-dioxane was changed from 3 PPB to 77 PPB in 1995. This did not occur because new information was learned about the chemical. This was, simply put, an act of our Legislature to accept more cancer deaths in our state. During a period of a few weeks, without any public notice or opportunity for significant public comment, the risk standards were changed in Michigan for all toxic substances.

A recent front page News article detailed the rising rates of cancer among American children. “Although the reasons remain unclear, many experts suspect the increase may be partly the result of growing exposure of new chemicals in the environment.” Isn’t it incredible, then, when the state standard of 77 PPB was based on calculations using a 154-pound adult?

Finally, for Krasnoff's information, the clean-up standard for his contamination site - that is, level of 1,4-dioxane which can be left in the groundwater when remedial operations terminate - is the same as for any other polluter: 77 PPB.

My personal involvement in this clean-up issue began four years ago, when my daughters were babies. My family drinks water from a well which could be contaminated if PGSI doesn’t clean up the western groundwater plume, and/or the polluted purgewater discharged to Honey Creek is insufficiently treated. We have no access to a municipal water supply.

I have spent precious hours of my daughters’ young lives helping to fight for a responsible cleanup. This is not a hobby. The health of our families and our investments in our homes and properties are at stake. Our township will endure a cleanup process that will last for at least 20 years. No animal studies can predict the effects of long-term, low-dose ingestion of 1,4-dioxane. Yet we are being asked to accept this risk in a community that includes many young families, pregnant women, infants and growing children.

This is precisely why hundreds of families have joined the fight to protect our drinking water. Perhaps our “opponents" are willing to drink water contaminated with 77 PPB of 1,4-dioxane. We are not. 

Krasnoff makes reference to the state rejecting PGSI’s revised clean-up plan for the western plume. What is the plan? Believe it or not, they propose doing nothing but simply letting the polluted water bubble up through artesian wells to Honey Creek. Property owners whose wells become contaminated would simply, in PGSI’s proposal, be forced to accept deed restrictions, and give up their well water.

Krasnoff, we invite you to our community to seethe neighborhoods currently and potentially affected by your 2-mile long plume of 1,4-dioxane. Give us the re* spect and concern that you would demand were our positions reversed. Local governments and citizens are, as we have always been, ready to cooperate with legitimate, responsible, technically sound cleanup activities.

What we will not do is jeopardize our families, our property and our drinking water by accepting a shift of the costs and risks of the clean-up which rightfully belong to the company. It is time that your company comes to the table to work cooperatively with local officials, citizens, and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to guarantee a prompt, proper and protective cleanup. Together we can reach a solution that will allow us to move forward in an efficient and effective manner.

An Ann Arbor resident, Patricia Benson is among the citizens who have lobbied public officials about the Gelman Sciences cleanup. News readers can contribute essays of general interest to Other Voices. Please call the editorial page editor about writing information at 994-6863.

(Pall chairman Eric) Krasnoff likens citizen involvement in the cleanup to 'a cottage industry, like bird-watching.' I suggest that Krasnoff does his homework before he again chooses to insult an entire community.